148 EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMORANDUM &C. 



leg-science, whatever the trial of skill might be bar- 

 ring the manufacture of hex-amaters, for he was no 

 Wrangham in the construction of Greek or Latin 

 verses : I had opportunities, myself, of seeing crack 

 university men take a shy at him with the argumentum 

 at ignoiantiam, evidently with a view to his annihilation 

 with a torrent of eloquence and the thunder of grand- 

 iloquent words, but B - B has arisen with 

 as much composure as if he were in his laboratory 

 about to lute a Welter's tube into the tubulure of a re- 

 tort, and has proceeded, with the utmost calmness and 

 in language as terse and unadorned as it was forcible 

 and to the purpose, to remove from the argument of his 

 opponent its oratorical garments, denuding it one by 

 one of its tropes and sophisms and at last exhibiting it, 

 like an infant divested of its ribboned cap and fine 

 frock red shoes and smart sash, the personification of 

 weakness. 



Besides being a most scientific experimental chemist 



B B was a linguist, an antiquarian, an 



electrician, a political economist and an excellent geo- 

 logist, indeed it might be truly said that he knew the 

 faces and characters of every rock and stone in West 

 Barbary as intimately as our Ettrick Shepherd does 

 those of the Yarrow sheep ; his researches in the geo- 

 logy and mineralogy of the adjacent districts were 

 numerous and laborious, and prosecuted with philoso- 

 phy and science, so that their results were frequently 

 valuable and always interesting, for in laying them be- 

 fore the public, or in treating any other technical matter 

 for general readers, he had the tact, so much to be 

 prized, of making his subject not only gratifying to the 

 learned but also pleasing to those who read merely for 

 amusement. 



He held peculiar opinions regarding the cultivation 

 of the fine arts, considering their approximation to ex- 

 cellency in a state as connected with and indicative of 

 that acme of refined luxury which has generally pre- 

 ceded or accompanied the commencement of a nation's 

 decline ; in consequence of this he never stood forward, 



